Governor Tina Kotek signs legislation to end child marriage in Oregon

Ore­gon today joined Wash­ing­ton and a grow­ing list of oth­er states in mak­ing eigh­teen the min­i­mum age for both par­ties to get a mar­riage license with Gov­er­nor Tina Kotek’s approval of Sen­ate Bill 548, bipar­ti­san leg­is­la­tion spon­sored by Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Janeen Soll­man and Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor David Brock Smith. 

Kotek’s sig­na­ture com­pletes SB 548’s jour­ney through the leg­isla­tive process in the Beaver State. The bill had a remark­ably smooth jour­ney to enact­ment, draw­ing scant oppo­si­tion from Ore­gon law­mak­ers. That’s because it is extreme­ly pop­u­lar. It costs noth­ing, harms no one, and ends a human rights abuse, as our friend Fraidy Reiss of Unchained At Last likes to say when advo­cat­ing for the legislation.

Pas­sage of SB 548 was NPI’s top leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ty for the 2025 ses­sion in Ore­gon, and we’re thrilled to have got­ten word that Gov­er­nor Kotek has signed it today.

Last autumn, NPI’s research found that a strong major­i­ty of Ore­gon vot­ers sup­port­ed rais­ing the age to mar­ry to eigh­teen for both parties. 

Unlike Wash­ing­ton, which had­n’t spec­i­fied any min­i­mum age to mar­ry until enact­ment of HB 1455 last year, Ore­gon had a pre­vi­ous age require­ment of seventeen. 

“A 17-year-old can be mar­ried if they have par­ent or guardian con­sent,” Yamhill Coun­ty’s web­site notes. “Con­sent forms are avail­able at our office.”

But just because a “con­sent” form is signed does­n’t mean a sev­en­teen year old is will­ing­ly enter­ing into a mar­riage. Con­sid­er the sce­nario of an absent father who does­n’t want to pay child sup­port any­more. He could, just by sign­ing a form, mar­ry off his under­age sev­en­teen year-old daugh­ter to an old­er man — no “con­sent” need­ed from the daugh­ter’s moth­er. Sounds absurd, does­n’t it? And yet Ore­gon law allows for that.

Soon, though, it won’t.

SB 548 does­n’t have an emer­gency clause or a spe­cial effec­tive date clause, so by default, it will go into effect on Jan­u­ary 1st, 2026, along with oth­er new laws.

Once Ore­gon law is aligned with Wash­ing­ton’s, the Pacif­ic North­west­’s two most pop­u­lous states will offer a crit­i­cal pro­tec­tion against forced mar­riages to all their residents.

Any mar­riage involv­ing a minor is con­sid­ered a forced mar­riage by the Unit­ed Nations Office of the High Com­mis­sion­er for Human Rights.

“Child mar­riage destroys near­ly every aspect of a girl’s life; indeed, it is rec­og­nized glob­al­ly as a harm­ful prac­tice that dis­em­pow­ers women and girls in par­tic­u­lar and hin­ders gen­der equal­i­ty,” says Unchained At Last. 

“The U.S. State Depart­ment con­sid­ers forced child mar­riage a form of child abuse and has called child mar­riage a human rights abuse.”

“Child mar­riage often under­mines statu­to­ry rape laws. In most U.S. states and under fed­er­al law, sex with a child that would oth­er­wise be con­sid­ered rape – in some cas­es, felony rape – becomes legal with­in marriage.”

“Child mar­riage can also be a form of human traf­fick­ing. Due to loop­holes in immi­gra­tion laws, thou­sands of Amer­i­can girls are being traf­ficked legal­ly for their cit­i­zen­ship, forced to mar­ry adult men from over­seas so the men can get a U.S. visa. Sim­i­lar­ly, Amer­i­can men are legal­ly import­ing child brides from overseas.”

The oth­er states that have banned child mar­riage are:

• Delaware
• New Jer­sey
• Penn­syl­va­nia
• Min­neso­ta
• Rhode Island
• New York
• Mass­a­chu­setts
• Ver­mont
• Con­necti­cut
• Michi­gan
• Vir­ginia
• New Hamp­shire
• Maine

Cal­i­for­nia, Alas­ka, Hawai’i, Ida­ho, and Mon­tana have all yet to ban child mar­riage. Cal­i­for­nia has no min­i­mum age to mar­ry, while Hawai’i spec­i­fies a min­i­mum age of fif­teen. Alas­ka, Mon­tana, and Ida­ho spec­i­fy a min­i­mum age of sixteen. 

Cal­i­for­nia and Hawai’i have Demo­c­ra­t­ic tri­fec­tas. Ida­ho and Mon­tana cur­rent­ly have Repub­li­can tri­fec­tas. Alas­ka has divid­ed government. 

We will con­tin­ue work­ing with our allies to ensure that more states fol­low Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon’s exam­ple. Each time a state bans child mar­riage, we get clos­er to hav­ing a coun­try that lives up its val­ues of respect­ing human rights.

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